The conference of second chancesMaligned in the past, Mike Price and George O'Leary spell redemption C-USA

Their actions wrought damage to their reputations and brought shame to revered college football programs, and they were ostensibly cast into purgatory for their transgressions.

Conference USA, undeniable coaching ability and a heaping helping of fate could bring Mike Price and George O'Leary together. Their potential confluence would offer a more direct connection than the one that linked the two in the past, an association where misdeeds off the field led to a disgraced, albeit temporary, departure from the game each genuinely loves.

That Price and O'Leary each sit one victory away from what could only be described as the Redemption Bowl offers a lush tale of resilience and reclamation.

"I would say the least of it is ironic," Price, in his second season at UTEP, said of a potential meeting with O'Leary and Central Florida in the C-USA title game. "I know what it's like; I've been there. It's kind of ironic that we could be playing each other."

UTEP (8-1, 5-1 C-USA) needs one victory in its final two games to clinch the West Division. Central Florida (7-3, 6-1) can wrap up the East Division with a win at Rice (1-8, 1-5) on Saturday. Completing its first season with a two-division format and a championship game, set for Dec. 3 at the stadium of the team with the best winning percentage, C-USA might luck into a matchup with significant national intrigue.

'Interesting matchup'

"We do have 12 children, and we try and treat them all the same," C-USA commissioner Britton Banowsky said. "But I think that it would be an interesting matchup to have coach O'Leary and coach Price going against each other in that game. They're both great coaches, and I've gotten to know both of them and think that they're also great people."

For one 17-month stretch between December 2001 and May 2003, even the most casual sports fan identified Price and O'Leary with truncated stints in which neither actually coached for the institutions that only months or days earlier had celebrated their hiring.

Price, 59, toiled in relative anonymity for 14 seasons at Washington State, leading the Cougars to a pair of Pac-10 titles and five bowl appearances. He exchanged anonymity for notoriety when, four months after leaving Washington State for Alabama, he was fired after a romp at a Pensacola, Fla., gentlemen's club produced tawdry national headlines.

Exiled from Alabama on May 3, 2003, Price spent a year away from coaching before resurfacing in El Paso on Dec. 21, 2003.

This union has proven far more fruitful.

The Miners won a total of six games in the three seasons before Price arrived. Last year, they achieved their first national ranking, recorded their third-highest average home attendance and closed the season with an 8-4 record and appearance in the EV1.net Houston Bowl. This season, No. 24 UTEP already has achieved bowl eligibility and is averaging 47,885 at the Sun Bowl — a total that will easily eclipse the 44,715 average from 2000.

Acceptance in West Texas

A curious coupling at first, El Paso embraced Price and moved beyond his blunder.

"Two years ago, there couldn't have been a football coach in America that was more appreciative of getting a second chance than I got here," Price said. "My one year of semi-retirement helped me realize that I do want to be a football coach, and humbled me to know that this is my God-given professional gift. It feels good because I appreciate what's been done, and I'm happy for the players and happy for the community."

Faulty résumé

After academic and athletic inaccuracies on his résumé led O'Leary to resign his post at Notre Dame on Dec. 14, 2001 — just five days after he left Georgia Tech to take the job — he found safe haven as an assistant with the Minnesota Vikings and head coach Mike Tice, who played for O'Leary at Central Islip High School in New York.

In January 2004, Central Florida, a Division I-A program for eight seasons, took a flyer on O'Leary, 59.

The Golden Knights finished 0-11 in 2004, lost the first two games of this season and carried a 17-game losing streak into their C-USA opener with Marshall. Central Florida has won seven of eight since and is the seventh team in NCAA history to be bowl eligible after going winless the previous season, pulling off the feat with just 10 scholarship seniors.

"I've been concentrating on getting this game in on Saturday. Then I'm sure I'll sit down and reflect on that," O'Leary said of his likely meeting with Price. "(But) it's interesting."

That C-USA has among its coaching fraternity Price, O'Leary and Southern Miss men's basketball coach Larry Eustachy, who resigned in shame from Iowa State in April 2003 after being photographed cavorting with coeds at a University of Missouri party three months earlier, makes for an interesting coincidence.

Don't forget Larry

Should Eustachy, 49, experience the same success in his second season in Hattiesburg that Price and O'Leary have enjoyed, C-USA will benefit from being the home of these reclamation projects.

"I love college athletics for a lot of reasons," Banowsky said. "College athletics reflects society, and society believes in giving people a second chance. I'm so pleased that the universities that hired those coaches did so because I prefer them to have a second chance in our conference than someplace else because they're great coaches and great people."